Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 27 February 2024, 6:00pm - Folkestone & Hythe webcasting

Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 27th February 2024 at 6:00pm 

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  1. Slide 1Slide 1
  2. Cllr Laura Davison
  3. Mr Jake Hamilton
  4. Cllr Laura Davison
  5. Cllr James Butcher
  6. Cllr John Wing
  7. Cllr Laura Davison
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  1. Cllr James Butcher
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  1. Cllr Gary Fuller
  2. Cllr Laura Davison
  3. Cllr Anita Jones
  4. Cllr Gary Fuller
  5. Cllr Anita Jones
  6. Cllr Bridget Chapman
  7. Cllr Gary Fuller
  8. Cllr Bridget Chapman
  9. Cllr Laura Davison
  10. Cllr James Butcher
  11. Cllr Gary Fuller
  12. Cllr Laura Davison
  13. Cllr Alan Martin
  14. Cllr Gary Fuller
  15. Cllr Alan Martin
  16. Cllr Gary Fuller
  17. Cllr Laura Davison
  18. Cllr Gary Fuller
  19. Mr Ewan Green
  20. Cllr Laura Davison
  21. Cllr Jim Martin
  22. Cllr Laura Davison
  23. Cllr Alan Martin
  24. Cllr Laura Davison
  25. Cllr Jim Martin
  26. Cllr Laura Davison
  27. Cllr Alan Martin
  28. Cllr Jim Martin
  29. Cllr Laura Davison
  30. Cllr Anita Jones
  31. Cllr Laura Davison
  32. Cllr Bridget Chapman
  33. Cllr Laura Davison
  34. Cllr Jim Martin
  35. Cllr Laura Davison
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  8. Scott Butler
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  10. Scott Butler
  11. Cllr James Butcher
  12. Scott Butler
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  14. Scott Butler
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  20. Cllr Anita Jones
  21. Scott Butler
  22. Cllr Laura Davison
  23. Cllr Bridget Chapman
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  27. Cllr Laura Davison
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  30. Andrew Rush
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  32. Cllr Laura Davison
  33. Cllr Elaine Martin
  34. Scott Butler
  35. Cllr Laura Davison
  36. Cllr John Wing
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  2. Mr James Hammond
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  16. Cllr Laura Davison
  17. Cllr Anita Jones
  18. Mr James Hammond
  19. Cllr Anita Jones
  20. Mr James Hammond
  21. Cllr Laura Davison
  22. Cllr Elaine Martin
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  26. Cllr Elaine Martin
  27. Mr James Hammond
  28. Cllr Elaine Martin
  29. Mr James Hammond
  30. Cllr Laura Davison
  31. Mr Ewan Green
  32. Cllr Laura Davison
  33. Cllr Alan Martin
  34. Mr James Hammond
  35. Cllr Alan Martin
  36. Mr James Hammond
  37. Cllr Alan Martin
  38. Cllr Laura Davison
  39. Cllr John Wing
  40. Mr James Hammond
  41. Cllr John Wing
  42. Mr James Hammond
  43. Cllr Laura Davison
  44. Mr Ewan Green
  45. Cllr Laura Davison
  46. Cllr Connor McConville
  47. Mr James Hammond
  48. Cllr Connor McConville
  49. Mr James Hammond
  50. Cllr Connor McConville
  51. Mr James Hammond
  52. Cllr Connor McConville
  53. Mr James Hammond
  54. Cllr Laura Davison
  55. Cllr James Butcher
  56. Mr James Hammond
  57. Cllr James Butcher
  58. Cllr Laura Davison
  59. Mr Ewan Green
  60. Cllr Laura Davison
  61. Cllr James Butcher
  62. Mr James Hammond
  63. Cllr James Butcher
  64. Mr James Hammond
  65. Cllr James Butcher
  66. Cllr Laura Davison
  67. Cllr Bridget Chapman
  68. Cllr Laura Davison
  69. Cllr Anita Jones
  70. Mr James Hammond
  71. Cllr Laura Davison
  72. Slide 16Slide 16
  73. Adrian Tofts
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  1. Cllr Laura Davison
  2. Cllr Anita Jones
  3. Cllr Laura Davison
  4. Cllr Anita Jones
  5. Cllr Laura Davison
  6. Cllr Alan Martin
  7. Cllr Laura Davison
  8. Cllr Bridget Chapman
  9. Cllr Laura Davison
  10. Cllr James Butcher
  11. Cllr Connor McConville
  12. Cllr Laura Davison
  13. Cllr Connor McConville
  14. Cllr Laura Davison
  15. Adrian Tofts
  16. Cllr Laura Davison
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  18. Cllr Laura Davison
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Slide selection

Cllr Laura Davison - 0:00:05
Good evening, everybody and welcome to this meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee. Nice to see everybody at the meeting will be webcast live to the internet. For those who don't wish to be recorded or films, you will need to leave the Chamber for members officers and others speaking at the meeting. It's important that the microphones are used, so viewers on the webcast, and others in the room may hear you would anyone with a mobile phone, please switch it to sign-up mode as they can be distracting. I'd like to remind members that, although we all have strong opinions on matters under consideration, it's important to treat members, officers and public speakers with respect
so we can start with apologies for absence, thank you Chair, we have
Mr Jake Hamilton - 0:00:45
no apologies, thank you very much, and are there any declarations of
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:00:49
interest Councillor Butcher?
yeah, I declare an interest as director of opportunities.
Cllr James Butcher - 0:00:57
and slowing.
Frederick Cher also a director of opportunities.

1 Apologies for Absence

2 Declarations of Interest

3 Minutes

Cllr John Wing - 0:01:02
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:01:09
OK, thank you, we'll move on to the minutes and we have two sets of minutes in front of us, we have the minutes of the Finance and performance subcommittee and the minutes of the previous scrutiny committee from the 30th of January are there any comments on the minutes Councillor Butcher, ya know not of inaccuracy but I'm looking at.
Cllr James Butcher - 0:01:36
since we item 14 on the minutes, page 10, where we were discussing the tenants, satisfaction survey action plan and Councillor Anna Martin have brought up about the regional disparities which applies to Romney and to the north towns, and it says the tenant engagement well being seen as specialist noted that the Council is aware and wants to do more to engage with rural areas.
and then a bit further on the tenant will be confirmed, this could be provided, I guess it's just to follow up to things that we raise and ask about, I'm not very clear if this is a process of scrutiny we presented with summary we ask questions about it.
on this debate uncertain as to
is that being followed up, or is that I don't know what that means to say aware and wants to do more?
that is a matter arising from from the minutes rather than a correction to the minute, yes, that's fine, but we perhaps we can follow that up outside of the meeting and make sure that we get that information that's been requested any other comments on the minutes.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:02:31
no, okay, could we have a proposer for the minutes for the 30th of January meeting and the seconder, thank you that all agreed.
thank you and for the Finance and performance subcommittee.
the proposer and seconder, thank you, Councillor Martin, and everybody in agreement on those,
thank you.
and to sign them.

4 Minutes of the Finance and Performance Sub-Committee

5 Cabinet Member updates

Cllr Laura Davison - 0:03:17
OK, we're moving on to our cabinet member updates and we're pleased to have with us Councillor, Fuller, the Cabinet Member for resident engagement and accountability, and would you like to introduce and then will perhaps ask some questions thanks thank you Chair I'll
Cllr Gary Fuller - 0:03:33
apologise in advance for this I say.
my my portfolio covers customer service, IT information, governance and accountability functions of the Council, I'm going to try and take each separately.
so on customer service, we've focused on two strategic aims.
firstly, we are aiming to encourage people to use the My account function that currently sits at just over 73% take-up, we've around 200 accounts being added per month.
as part of this, we are also looking how looking at how we can improve take-up on the Marsh, which is currently significantly lower than for the rest of the district at around 60%.
we are also ensuring how sorry we're also exploring how we can ensure that.
the service isn't single use by adding new features and more useful information to HRA full residents so that they will come back rather than just using it, say to get rid of a Christmas tree and then forgetting about it.
and the second focus, which is in partnership with the IT department, is moving to providing forms form functionality, to really reduce reliance on e-mail calls and post.
post, in particular, can be quite expensive,
thorough, but obviously the most complex for queries, where a call or an e-mail or whatever it would be required, so in November 2023 we had 263 forms life and there's more going live every month, we are also seeing steady progress, so in last month 34% of transactions involved forms, whereas that figure was 30% in January 2023 so, and that's, despite the number of transactions per month going up by 1,000 across the year, as it were, there's obviously still more to do though because you know it's still below 50%
an overarching what I mentioned above, we were currently renewing the customer access strategy to identify our focus going forward for the next few years. I'm due to meet with the relevant staff in the next couple of weeks to discuss the process for developing the strategy, and when we'd say obviously, I'd welcome feedback and suggestions on what we could improve and do differently on that customer service function, ideally with reference to the previous strategy, so that we've got a sort of basis for for building
it is worth noting that at the most recent meeting of the customer service network group, we actually appear to be a bit of an outlier in terms of how far we are in terms of shifting to online services with something you know with other Councils mentioning that they were implementing services that we've had for a few years and on my account in particular I went to a an LGA digitalisation training recently and there Wigan Council were being touted as best practice in this arena and their take-up of my account was 72%, so it was broadly similar to our own, so I'm actually pretty confident that at least on the certainly under the digitalisation side of things we are making good progress,
moving onto IT, aside from bills, the building forms which I can assure you, is the bane of many a web developers existence.
such as the new Ward Grant application forms which hopefully you've noticed.
there has also been some moves to integrate some of our systems with our contractors, such as the earlier build our own systems, such as a new team as sorry, a new system for the grounds maintenance team who were up until recently still stuck using pen and paper for things they were the kind of the forgotten service as it were in terms of digitalisation and also to we're trying to maximise the value we get from the Microsoft services that we use specifically where we're building our internet functionality you be using SharePoint and we're also finding ways to allow us to be less less.
reliant on PR individual sort of product licences for certain vendors that were costing quite a significant amount of money for functionality, we could just deliver for reforms in shareholders, so that's that's one of the sort of key areas, also a key consideration aside from functionality a cybersecurity
so you probably have noticed that the Kent public septum network was recently suffered a cyber incident.
and the the Head of IT expects the number of such incidents to increase during the election year, and so something we need to be keenly aware of while we were affected by that particular incident, we were able to restore systems within 24 hours, so part of that, as I understand it because we don't we're not to rely on a single vendor as it were.
you'll also have noticed, via an e-mail from Adrianna the phishing attempt aimed at updating my bank details with the Council I can't begin to tell you how grateful my bank manager is that HR contacted me about that particular attempt.
as is my background.
as with customer access strategy, our our digital strategy is also being reviewed this year, it will come as no surprise that it will almost certainly focus on how we shift services online and work digitally in a way that saves time and money but also is secure.
I've seen an injury or an initial draft of this strategy, along with a high level roadmap, and I'm expecting to have more detail soon, and once again you know there was a previous strategy feel free to look it over and if you spot anything that we could do better that we should do better that's missing from that shadow you then get in touch.
well that covers customer service in IT, moving onto information governance as it stands we've got currently 11 subject access requests, 36, freedom of information requests and 7 Environmental information Regulation requests outstanding, all of these can be exceedingly complex and I'm sure you've noted that we're not yet consistently meeting the statutory deadlines for these.
there's two ways that we're seeking to improve upon this, the first is that the resources and the team's been increased.
we haven't.
in that area in haven't necessarily felt the benefits, yet because there's been a quite a bit of staff sickness and various things
that have affected that the second sort of threadbare is that we are sorry, we are the the IT team are building reports into our customer relationship management system or see are them to make it easier to access the the relevant information because,
I mean, we've subject access requests, for example, it's not just about finding all of the e-mails all day and forms or data where someone's mentioned you've also got to make sure that you can anonymous yeah, there's the stuff that shouldn't be in there so it's it's far from easy but I would be lying if I said there wasn't a way to go and this isn't perfect yet.
on the Data Protection side.
the the teams focused on training staff to recognise and report data breaches because that was identified as a weakness in our processes.
the we therefore we honestly therefore expect the number of reports to go up in the next few months, because effectively, if we get better at being aware of these things, we can have notice more of them, so that should actually be viewed as a positive, even though you might look at us in horror when you see the KPI as again though there is still a way to go on this, there were a number of reports that didn't meet the 72 hour deadline and that's clearly not good enough and something we need to work on.
moving onto elections, it's gonna be a busy year.
preparations for the PCC elections began last September and obviously there is a general election at some point this year.
or possibly January, but my money's currently on November, I'll take bets from everyone here we can start there were, which is why a book so as it stands we have 84,114 electors eligible to vote in the PCC elections and 68,158 electors that can vote in the general election for the new constituency than the effects on the highest constituency.
you should have seen a press release today about the constituency changes and will obviously.
be continuing to sort of inform people and incorporate the various changes from the election at 20.22 into our processes, and so on.
onto the accountability bit of my portfolio, which mainly covers audit and fraud and corruption, now the specifics of these, though, tend to be overseen by the relevant portfolio holders for the service, not to mention the cabinet member for finance, who actually knows what's going on with the money he hopes.
and obviously scrutinised by audit and governance committee so.
I, I wouldn't say I have any particular strategic update on that area, what I would say is obviously that the the result of the audit on waste services, should you know the the actions from that, should be well in hand.
if I can just finish them by I'd like to thank every officer that supports my portfolio areas and the works on behalf of the Council to deliver our aims as it were, and of course, most importantly, to serve our residents, I think, given the the resource constraints that have been foisted upon us in the last 14 years,
I think we do an excellent job, that said, I don't think we should rest on our laurels, and I'm sure that with the review of strategy that's going on at the moment and when the new Council, and hopefully you guys as well will find ways to improve and,
continue to get there, thank you.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:13:45
thank you, Councillor Fuller, for covering that wide ranging series of their responsibilities that you have.
don't breathe too long because we're gonna have some questions, is there any Councillor who would like to make a comment or ask a question in relation to the report, Councillor Jones hi, it sounds like you're doing a great job and the officers are doing a great job,
Cllr Anita Jones - 0:14:08
I think it's becoming more user friendly.
gradually, which is what we want, sorry, have you looked at sort of apps that can make it even more user friendly from your phone, because I think obviously everybody has a phone in their pocket?
and not everybody has a computer to hand, so I don't know where you're at with that.
gonna get my gig home now, sorry, so there are very different options
Cllr Gary Fuller - 0:14:30
for building mobile apps, so you can you can build one that sort of sits on the device.
you can build one, that's a sort of hybrid, so it's in a framework, but it sits on the device, but it's almost a website, and the other option is you can build something called a progressive web-app which actually requires a lot less work on what that does is it adds a wrapper to your existing website that allows you to save it, to your phone sorry, we've it now
unfortunately, building.
mobile apps, because it's a bit of a specialist area, tends to be very expensive and probably more expensive than it should be. But progressive web apps are something that I have discussed with the head of IT, and he's he's going to be looking into in more detail because I mean it as long as our website continues to be designed mobile first, which is the sort of design paradigm we should be using now anyway, then it shouldn't be too complicated to to move into the sort of progressive web space and that, as I say, the overheads for actually doing so are much lower, so it should be deliverable how much lower cost as well. So that's kinda the direction we're looking in on that one. Yeah, that's great. I mean that links really well with
Cllr Anita Jones - 0:15:46
people who aren't they aren't engaging with the thing with my account, it might be because they don't have a computer to hand, but I say everybody has a phone, usually in their pocket, so yeah, the more we can get that accessibility to everybody that'd be amazing actually.
Councillor Chapman.
sorry.
practice clearly I'm just building on from that.
Cllr Bridget Chapman - 0:16:08
not not everybody has a smartphone and how are we keeping people that don't have access to the internet easily?
how are we making sure that they are still able to fully access services?
so most of the people that are able to do that are still currently
Cllr Gary Fuller - 0:16:30
able to phone visit, the customer access points, and we, we've got data, there were still plenty of people visiting it again, the issue there is actually going to be the Marsh because,
they don't have a local customer access point and they don't have particularly good public transport any more things Stagecoach, so that is something that we're going to need to explore in more detail one of the things on the side of trying to get out the my account usage, one of the things that we have discussed and that we need to explore in more detail. Is the previous administration looked at actually putting effectively technology to access services into particular locations which didn't really well? There wasn't a great sort of set-up for doing so. It was explored at Sandwell Library, for example, but didn't go ahead in the end
what I'm moving towards Maurice is actually.
training people that are involved in Parish Councils, libraries that kind of thing to actually use those services so that people can come to their library and get support directly from the people that are there rather than needing to come to us.
so what within that, though, the first stage is to actually identify the people that could fulfil that role and would be willing to fill that role. So that's kind of what we've got to look to look at next o in terms of what you were saying about smartphones there, that there was actually an interesting study a few years ago that identified that, in particular sort of low income families, especially single parents, often they do have a what were what would effectively be a mid range smartphone that she used to access services. So in terms of designing our IT systems, it's not just about making sure it works on a mobile, but it making sure it works on a mobile that isn't the sort of flagship that costs 1,000 pounds to buy, but something that you can get over the counter for 3,400 pounds which means smaller screens, weaker processes, that kind of thing, so we'll need to think about efficiencies and so on, and there are
I can get my geek on sorry, there are systems that can help you with things like accessibility, and so on, with websites and services that we that you can leverage that are open source as well, so there's not even necessarily a cost involved, so but you are more than happy to discuss that with the head of IT for hours on end.
until he gets bored and tucks me out of his office.
thank you, that's that's really helpful, I mean I'm thinking of yeah,
Cllr Bridget Chapman - 0:19:05
I've got relatives who live in Central Ward who are in their 80s and had the library idea sounds really good to me, that's something I think they would really.
well, yeah.
but.
but anything, I think anything that drives traffic to libraries is if there is a good thing to do so, that's really helpful, thank you.
I would echo that's about the are the Library Councillor Butcher.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:19:29
yeah thanks I was really wrenching to hear all that and I just
Cllr James Butcher - 0:19:34
wondered because we talked a lot about the digital way of engaging or you kind of responsible for other forms of engagement, consultation and how we do that I mean I'm just thinking about the consultation we had around the committee system which felt like it left a little to be desired in terms of the quality of that and I just wondered where does the thinking happen around how do we have good quality conversations with our residents about what's going on?
so
resident engagement is part of my title, but it's actually a bit of a
Cllr Gary Fuller - 0:20:02
misnomer, really, what it really means is customer service and the actual engagement functions of the Council are sort of covered under the community site, none of my colleagues are the right here, so it's not my fault but I am more than willing to help especially when it comes to playing with IT and suggesting IT solutions.
thank you, Councillor Martin.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:20:26
thank you my question, so just the year, so the Marsh is lagging
Cllr Alan Martin - 0:20:32
again, so we were at 60% take-up rate interested in your thoughts as to why that is presumably you've got the data that tells you who they are and I wonder whether if if we get a few of us together we can perhaps identify
pockets on the Marsh that we can better communicate, we will find other ways of of getting the message out through parish council meetings that we all attend and that kind of thing.
yeah, I don't have the names of individuals, I'm sorry, but we did, we
Cllr Gary Fuller - 0:21:03
could, I think, break it down better by I mean currently the figures I'm seeing it by ward effectively, so I can see that Romney Marsh ward, I think it was was on 60% in fact let's actually bring up the figures.
yeah, so we've got actually it wasn't you see, I've done that itself, a disservice is actually 64%, they say I've improved it already.
but year Romney Marsh is lowest at 64 hi rule is at 68, so and then highest in shock news or those the are are sort of near near town as it was who've got 85% per central 82% per Sandgate, the the the interesting outlier and the one that we discussed at the previous meeting actually it's North Downs East.
which has an 81% take-up and and is similarly similarly has rural areas, not the same as the most obviously but has plenty of rural residents so.
we are one of the things we're gonna be doing is looking at why that might be and seeing if we can apply the lessons from there to to the Marsh, as it were, but certainly being able to speak to the Parish Councils and again potentially finding volunteers to help people with how to use my account evangelism for that kind of thing is is something I'd be quite keen today.
certainly, if we look at the data, there's probably pockets of.
Cllr Alan Martin - 0:22:35
people isn't, it's probably not worth as trying too hard, particularly our elderly people, in one one, and so on, I would, I would imagine, but it strikes me if there is an advantage to the resident as well as the council from a cost perspective, it's probably worth as to targeting those individuals in some kind of Council communication to to draw them in. I think so yeah, I mean basically the
Cllr Gary Fuller - 0:23:00
I mean, if you, unless you're phoning or e-mailing, obviously if, if you want to make contact with the Council via a customer access point, if you want to speak to someone you've got a hope that there is a bus.
it turns up, then, come into the access point, obviously wait to speak to someone the zone, so there is actually already a cost for the individual if they're not able to use my account because of things like paying for the bathroom and airtime and their effort and so on, so there's always gonna be an advantage to encouraging people that can go online to go online.
the it's a shame actually, that the old basic skills and so an initiative standard exists that used to exist in the early 2000, because one of those was.
teaching IT to suck hard to reach groups, elderly people, people in the Job Centre, that kind of thing, things that unfortunately disappeared in 2010 for for reasons and so are, and unfortunately that's probably not an initiative that we could offer, but again, if there are people that are teaching IT and so on to hard-to-reach groups, there's no reason why we can reach out to them as well.
yeah, I think there have been initiatives at 10.00 are some of the
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:24:14
repair cafes, for example, looking at digital skills so that might be worth kind of seeing if there could be a link up through through that, perhaps are there any other comments could you just clarify in terms of the the policies and strategies that you're working on?
they will they come in front of members to to contribute to what's the
Cllr Gary Fuller - 0:24:39
process for those I'm gonna pass over to your number on ephemera to try and answer because Hey Hey, he's been through this process before I'm still going for yeah I think we're talking about customer access
Mr Ewan Green - 0:24:49
Strategy Digital, they will definitely form part of the work plan for USC.
and I have no doubt that Members will also be asked for a wider contribution as well, and both will go through to Cabinet for agreement, thank you for clarifying that,
thank you very much, Councillor Fuller.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:25:07
look forward to you coming back to the Committee at another time and updating us further on the work that you're doing.
OK, those who remember are our previous meeting will remember that we had Councillor Jim Martin, come to the committee before we're pleased that he's returning for a guest appearance at this committee, it's to speak to the committee, particularly in relation to a decision made within the portfolio that he holds recently in relation to the Princess Parade Holdings, so thank you for coming back to the Committee, Councillor Martin, we wanted to
just ask some questions around that decision if that's OK
so I don't know if there's anything you want to sort of say by way of introduction, otherwise I'll invite councillors just to ask the questions that they have in relation to that decision
Cllr Jim Martin - 0:26:06
I'm very happy to to just answer the questions as a by come up, I can't promise that I'll give very short answers but are happy to take very short questions.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:26:18
well, if you can do your best, Councillor Martin, I'll open it to the to the committee.
Councillor Alan Martin,
thank you, but I had a cluster of questions I tried to turn into one
Cllr Alan Martin - 0:26:33
made more life, a bit difficult so anyway the
I appreciate Prince's praise got quite a back story and a lot of emotion on all sides associated as a
a newbie to the to the Chamber, I don't.
I haven't been a part of that backstory and the the topic feels a little bit like me joining a box set on series six, and I don't fully understand the interaction between all the different characters and, and what will the arguments about?
I guess with that being the case, I struggle just a little bit with the decision that that's being made.
and I think it's because I I look at the decision without the emotion of the past, sort of wrapped up within it.
and I guess the questions that are, on my mind are as follows, so it seems to me like a quite significant amount of money being spent when the Council is making significant cuts elsewhere.
for a temporary solution, a temporary solution that is being made actually ahead of us, consciously going into a into a consultation, which raises the question in my mind as to whether we should perhaps have the consultation first before actually taking any action and and spending our prisons money,
when I look at the amount of money being spent and the fact that it's temporary, I also it raises a question in my mind around whether we should spend that money, given the fact that the impacts of a relatively isolated area and the decisions that we make should be for the benefit of the whole district and it might surprise a lot of people here because it has been such a big topic for everyone but when I talked to my residents on the Romney Marsh a fair few of them are even aware of what Princess Paradise let alone the fact that there are there are issues around it.
the decision also, in my mind, seems to be taken against the advice of the contamination.
reports, I'd be interested in your your thoughts around that and to summarise that little cluster of questions, I guess I'm a bit concerned, it's a bit of a symbolic action, I sort of understand why there might be a desire to
Tim to make that symbolic action, but, given the fact that it comes at quite a cost within a local area, I struggled to I struggled to justify how we can make that decision financially, I'll leave that there, thank you, Councillor Harrington,
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:29:14
Councillor other other Councillor Martin, yes, there we go, it's yeah, OK.
Cllr Jim Martin - 0:29:18
or I'll I'll try and start before I'll get into the sort of rhetoric which yeah I might have some emotional baggage are attached to it, I'll I'll stick to to the numbers the first number really to think about is that the leaving the the hold where it is,
costs are 30,000 pounds a year, no, that's largely removing graffiti, but that's that's the cost of the cost of doing nothing is 30,000 pounds a year until until it until something happens to it.
the the other thing to bear in mind is that this is not a cost to the Council, it's a saving.
now I'll explain that saving is because the the holding is being moved to article and some of the hold is being used to hold off a group of properties that was scheduled originally to be demolished in Phase 1, but are now not gonna be demolished in Phase 1 and have all of their services are still connected now the cost of disconnecting all of those services is,
530,000 pounds by erecting the hold around these properties, the cost is 300,000 pounds, thereby saving the Council 230,000 pounds, so sorry, it's not a cost to the council, it is actually a saving.
when you, when you add in the the the cost of leaving it standing, where it is at 30,000 pounds a year, you can see that this has been a, you know, a prudent decision in terms of moving the the hold now, the the no fence.
is a post and wire fence?
so the idea is that you can see through it and you will be able to see across the site that's what people have missed is is looking across the site as you walk along the canal or as you walk along the seafront looking at the white holding has been you know or obstructive for for many people the the the contract to erect the fence is a 50,000 pounds but the cost to the Council is 70,000 pounds the additional 20 being 5 K that we have to pay to an ecologist to keep a monitoring watch on what we're doing. 10 k to the archaeologist who is also monitoring what we're doing and is fired ground to remove all of the reptile fencing that was erected across
Prince's pride when they were corralling the direct hours for for moving, so so in total it's a 50 grand fence, it's costing us 70 p because we've got to employ an ecologist, an archaeologist and remove the reptile fencing, but overall,
the saving to the Council is 230,000 pounds, so it is well worth doing, we need the fence for a number of reasons, one is to deter trespasses, and you no doubt who have a long memory will remember, we've had incursions of travellers on that site in the past.
but number two is the site is contaminated now when you read the the the Re, the report, the the the consultant does I talk about this, but the risk?
to to you know.
people or animals is.
eating the soil so so airborne contaminants.
and is not really a problem as far as the consultants concerned is, if you eat the soil now, so you can't invite people on their tired picnics, you can't invite children on their to wander about freely and you definitely can't run dogs on their because dogs eat soil.
so the risk is in ingesting these contaminants, so that's why it's got to have a fence, there will be signs up, et cetera, et cetera, now, with regard to the the consultation or later in the year, that will be very much you know and an open consultation, it will be a blank sheet of paper and it will be for everyone and indeed everyone in the district so you know we would,
I'm sure be delighted to see people from the Marsh coming to to to express their opinion, but it will be driven by what people in the district want to do with that site.
there have been, you know, the, there is a long and long sorry story.
associated with Princess Parade, which kind of touches so many parts of this Council.
but which I won't go into now, thankfully, but overall this is an economic solution for the council, because we save so much money in holding these properties are audible and on a final thing, is of course, these are very robust holdings, they're very good quality holdings and there they will have a sale value at once, once they are taken down from whence, when these properties get demolished, the the holdings will be sold on, so so that saving could go out. But he's not going to go up a lot, but so on, on very, very happy to sit here tonight and say that it was a prudent, sensible financial decision.
to do this.
thank you, Councillor Martin, do you want to come back on that yeah,
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:36:04
so thank you for that it was a.
Cllr Alan Martin - 0:36:08
now its lengthy response is just on the cattle.
sub questions, I guessed it on the contamination report. The the bit line pasted out of it, reads that it's recommended that the existing hoarding remains in place until it can be demonstrated that the risks associated with the proposed future uses are acceptable and could be managed appropriately. And that was the part of the report which I I, I got the impression they were saying leave everything as it is until it's clear to you how you want to proceed, whereas we were ripping the hoardings up and putting a different type of fencing in, so it was just
at that point I was pulling out really yeah, for sure I mean are I you
Cllr Jim Martin - 0:36:47
know, there's a bit of consultant speak going on in there which essentially says I'm not, I'm not taking any responsibility for this on I'm off forcing this into the future, so if you can make up your mind what you want to do with this building, what you want to do with this site, sorry, I will then tell you whether or not this is the appropriate fence, but until you tell me that I won't tell you whether it's appropriate or not, so so there's a bit in terms of there is a, there is a great there's accumulative amount of information that exists in the Council regarding soil conditions, et cetera, at Princess Parade,
and that's not to say there is no risk, there is undoubtedly, but the balance of risk is judged to be low, and that's why the hold is being removed.
Councillor Jones,
thank you, it's something that's been a really good explanation, I can
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:37:42
Cllr Anita Jones - 0:37:44
see why people perhaps in the further outreaches of the district might not understand, but obviously it was a really contentious issue in Hayes and closer parts of the District.
I think, from a tourism point of view for Haith it's a real blight on the landscape at the moment and obviously what the summer season coming and by removing it and putting in something which is not so imposing will actually be a real boost to Hyde and Seabrook so from that point of view we're really doing something good for the town also from a safety point of view.
I don't know if you've driven along there, it's horrible to drive along there and I've had a lot of complaints from residents because of the flickering as you drive past the hoardings, so there are lots of people who are really grateful that this hoarding is going to be removed for say quite a variety of reasons and also just because people like the open space that's the most simple recent but obviously from a tourism and from a safety point of view I think it's really important that this happens, so thank you for pushing this forward.
thank you, Councillor Jones, Councillor Chapman.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:38:52
it's a side issue, it's just a note about language, we can have a
Cllr Bridget Chapman - 0:38:56
debate about the rights and wrongs of the Traveller lifestyle, but can we not refer to incursions up to me as a hostile act or just check the definition in the dictionary, and I think that's probably not the best way of describing those with the greatest respect Jim,
noted thanks, Councillor Chapman, any other comments.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:39:18
anything you'd like to add Councillor Martin.
Cllr Jim Martin - 0:39:23
I just want one point of responding to Councillor Jones's point in not in I, I think the
the Planning Inspector who spoke in 2003, I referred to the views across Prince's Parade as the finest in the district, and by removing this hold we will be revealing the finest views in the District once again.

6 Update from Community Safety Partnership and the new 3 year Plan

Cllr Laura Davison - 0:39:54
thank you, Councillor Martin, for coming to the Committee and thank you Councillors for your questions, we'll move on, we have in front of us in terms of substantive items, the first item on our agenda is the update from the Community Safety Partnership and the new three year plan.
Councillor Blake, more, thank you.
Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:40:15
thanks very much Members nice to be back at Marseille again to introduce the new three-year plan for the community safety partnership.
as most people here, I'm sure, know, the Community Safety Partnership includes this Council, Kent, County Council, the police and other partners, it's the principal means by which breed promote community safety in the district and tackle anti-social behaviour.
the Community Safety Partnership has a plan agreed by all the partners, which is renewed every three years.
so we're in the process at the moment of renewing that plan, and the draft is presented to the committee this evening, you'll see if you compare it with the previous one, it's been designed to be a little bit more accessible to the public and to provide a very clear, concise statement of what the community safety partnership does and what it aims to do. Differences in this plan from the previous one include the Safer streets project and a focus on young people.
it also includes examples of projects that the Community Safety Partnership agencies are delivering together or plan to do.
so it's presented this evening with the intention of inviting feedback from the Committee into this draft still in the development stage, so very much welcome any comments and input to it, thank you, thank you, Councillor Blake more would you like to comment Scott thank you Chair
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:41:38
Scott Butler - 0:41:40
so in addition to Councillors open statement and introduction, can you say the partnership has a statutory requirement to provide a published document, a safety plan,
as you might expect, form a traditional plan, there's no timelines, there's no skills, there's no accountable actions, these are all held within the action plan, and that's what we bring to the overview and scrutiny in October November time, so we ought to open November. The Community Safety Partnership comes together with our partners, police probation, Kent Fire and Rescue KCC attend overview and scrutiny with myself and we present the accountable actions what we've been up to what we're delivering, almost like a mid-year view,
and that's where the tracker balls are that's where the delivery of this tonight, we're looking at the published version that helps the public, understand the priorities of the Community Safety Partnership and also helps us to create our actionable actions and timescales and plan at our annual events which we hope to take place in April so it was setting the priorities tonight with your support.
this will be, this is a three-year plan, so as of 2021 prior to 2021, it was an annual review.
this is a three-year plan, it helps us to establish our priorities over the longer term.
and will still be reviewed annually, so there's only immediate changes, say new police Crime Commissioner potentially might set some new priorities, it means that we can update it review it annually, but the idea is that this is a three-year plan so we can also achieve some long term goals but the funding that we can get so thanks very much for your review.
thank you very much, so, for just for our sort of collective
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:43:39
understanding, what what would be useful in terms of our sort of feedback this evening is feedback in terms of the the document and comments on the document from the from the perspective of it being useful to our residents as a kind of clear explanation of what the Partnership does absolutely Chair, thank you say that the idea is that
Scott Butler - 0:43:59
this document were printed A5 so that we can hand out that the stores are COSLA. Community engagement events. It can be with in the fund the customer access point here, but also with all our partners, so they can see the priorities of the CSP and how we're working together to make the District safe
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:44:23
thank you, that's really helpful to to make that clear, I think OK, hopefully, Councillors had a chance to have a look at the plan, do any councils have any comments or suggestions for the team in terms of the document Councillor Butcher?
thanks Chair just a small point, novice dinner.
Cllr James Butcher - 0:44:42
or jasmine with me, yeah, page 27, where talked about on the national ranking the district is 84, I was unsure their menstrual ranking what?
sorry, I will clarify that deprivation.
and then.
Scott Butler - 0:45:00
I I guess I think there's something else last term we had this, which
Cllr James Butcher - 0:45:07
is all of this seems incredibly important and really central to residents' concerns and a huge amount of really impressive activity, I guess how do we?
explain to residents what difference all of that activity is making, and you talked about making the District a safer place, the one the one place, that the three-year trend, to quote there's lots of ups and downs of that.
is it is crime, very different in September 23 than it was, I mean, it looks like it might be a little bit lower, but I guess it's really trying to understand is all of this making a difference, how do we know whether we're doing the right things or not et cetera?
I wish it was that easy, a lot of the work that we do is signposting
Scott Butler - 0:45:47
direction.
and doesn't necessarily have clear accountable outcomes to it, so what were hoped there is, we hope that the work that we're doing has positive impacts and helps people to avoid crime, but it doesn't necessarily always show the trends in the way that we want to show them would rather be open and honest with the States than create steps to make to fit the story that we tell him.
so I guess it begs the question of how do you decide what to do and
Cllr James Butcher - 0:46:18
what not to do, what activities to invest in what to say no, actually that's probably not worth doing so, I guess I want to know is, is there a sort of academic research that would suggest this kind of thing works better than that kind of thing?
Scott Butler - 0:46:32
absolutely, we use best-case scenarios, we link in with other community partnerships across Kent, we understand what works well, what had good uptake was good engagement, we also use best practice from across the country in line with the Safer streets project we've utilised, it has round five and we've utilise what's worked well in the previous stages as to where to prioritise the work and delivery.
so a lot more emphasis in our version has been taken on education.
and resolving concerns we had highlighted at the start of the project, including improving the CCTV network, because that was a localised issue.
but.
and we utilise data from our annual strategic assessment, so every year we gather data from all our partners, strategic such as statutory and non-statutory agencies, we create it's an 82 page document in guff, but
because of the nature of the product, it's not all our inflation, so it doesn't get shared, but it helps us to be able to develop the authorities or the Community Safety Partnership.
this year there was uptake and engagement and again those are great
Cllr James Butcher - 0:47:46
sense of activity, people engaging with it. I think it still leaves us with the question. Does that lead to the outcomes that we're looking for, and I guess that's really really hard to pin down, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying, and I appreciate it may not be quantitative data, but it's the quality data, religious, some way of saying to people, yes, all of this activity is making a difference and we have some evidence to suggest
yeah, so so there has been a reduction in crime, although doesn't show on this data that the place of support.
are speaking about a reduction in crime, especially and social behavior over the last two years?
especially since COVID, and we have more knowledge of the cumulative
Scott Butler - 0:48:30
data that we do have case studies and examples of best practice we've seen a reduction and such behavior vampires park with some of the deliberate work that we've been doing in terms of work in those areas so we take information from our local engagement meetings engaging with residents to understand the issues in their areas and we deliberately work and cycle and prioritise.
diversion of outreach works those areas, so again, last point will be able if that's the case, and if there is an absence, would be great to
Cllr James Butcher - 0:48:59
to see in here, because I think that's what people are interested in and just a bit about language VHP. I presume the violence against the person or something, but that's not self evident from his surface is a public document great just to have that yeah, I've said so I'll make a note of that and we can include that into
the delivery part of the back was to some of the engagements, some of them as well as well, and I've made a note to expand on the BA, thank you thanks.
thank you, Councillor Butcher, Councillor Alan Martin.
Scott Butler - 0:49:27
I think some of my points overlap, which was a little bit, but I was
Cllr Alan Martin - 0:49:32
reading the documents, so just bear with me.
so if this is a document that is going out to residents, I think there is an opportunity to bring to life a little bit why this is relevant to them, so my experience in a lot of the villages is that, and I guess my concern a little bit as people might read this and they see that we're doing all this great stuff around anti-social behaviour and whatever they won't necessarily twig the fact that that might be going on around them and that,
they should perhaps report some of the things that they are observing, so I wonder whether there is an opportunity to an icon exactly provide examples of.
things like anti-social behaviour too.
without some care Hefce, but if you could maybe provide some examples that show that thing things like this do happen in and around where you live and then maybe to take the opportunity to put a little bit of connectivity around what people can do if they want to report it which, as we all know is one of the big areas where,
where residents don't often step forward, they may do on Facebook, but they they don't step forward and report these things properly, so I, I think if we could cram a bit of that in there is otherwise a really good document actually so that's my thoughts. Thank you, Councillor yesterday said we could add or add reporting page to this document
Scott Butler - 0:50:52
where people can report different crimes haven't had social behaviour through the partners as it's a public place and documents. Yes, I can work quite easily
and also sorry to come back to Councillor Poacher, my bus has mentioned the safe spaces where we've introduced the safe spaces in Bouverie Place, and we're expanding it across the district. The reason we introduced it in the first place is because of the number of suicides that are happening at Bouverie Place in the shopping centre, and since the introduction of that we can't take full credit for it. But where there has been a reduction, we haven't had any suicides at that location because of the additional training that we provided to security staff, the opportunity for people to engage and the advertised signpost, interfere to help to tie that
so we can't claim full responsibility, we wouldn't necessarily want to claim full responsibility but yeah, that's some of the work that we can do.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:51:50
thank you, Councillor Jones, it's just a very small point, this is going out for the whole district and we have pictures of Folkestone
Cllr Anita Jones - 0:51:56
there, and we could say people were done on the Marsh, might want to think how they might look at it and think all this is a document about sexting, so I think we just need to broaden it.
Scott Butler - 0:52:10
received and is my notes, we're going to take the picture of a boat of that were not run in the top six projects, and we're going to change that for some pictures of Bomby, Marsh and Lydd.
maybe with the school, as well as Marsh Academy and things at LinkedIn because there's more emphasis on reducing young people and there's no photos of young people or young people activities that I want to try inside out as well.
Good point, Councillor Chapman.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:52:35
this might be hopelessly naive, I think it's by the way, I've got a
Cllr Bridget Chapman - 0:52:39
good friend that works, the Homestart he's got a lot of great stuff to say about what you're doing, she's really really impressed and I trust her judgment, so it's thank you for all the work that you're doing. It's great that making women and girls feel safe is such a key part of this.
and this is where it's hopelessly naive, the one thing that people come to me about again and again over, especially over the winter months, is streetlighting, and I know that that's County Council issue, but what conversations, what what conversations are happening about that, is there any update you can give us on that because that's such a simple thing and yet so key in making people feel safe.
thank you very much, and you all take that on board is not just a
Scott Butler - 0:53:24
local issue, but it's an issue that we've worked on across the county and nationally we.
as a small token, this year we put, we provided a lot of people with small torches, it's just something as advertised. Our logo is not so much also under the sacred streets programme of working on a connected Folkestone, so which is using the way-finding points and to create an interactive map that also identifies the CCTV, the defibrillators, the taxi ranks, so that people can scan the way-finding points for fingerposts. You can open an interactive map on your phone. You can find the most direct and vote that uses the Safer, those which are also the views of patrolled by police officers on the bedroom on their when they're not going to pursue jobs. I mean, these are also the better lit boozer. The wider chunk Boots encourages people to utilise those you've got to get to where they're going and be able to use their own address and things like that. So the idea is that it links to Google quite easily
but that's part of the projects of safer streets is helping people that aren't familiar with the area Lincoln, with the levelling-up fund as well, with the new connecting the train station to the town centre.
and it is predominantly, is town focus to start with, because that's what the safer streets.
prioritised, but were also used and examples of what was well in the safer streets to be able to expand that across the districts within the three-year programme, so the safest the safe spaces programme that's been launched in the town centre will be expanded across the districts this year and so we're going to run a connected Folkestone and then what works well, we're trying to see if we can expand that across the other towns, competitions as well in the litter.
thank you for the answer, I just say I don't think we should, we
Cllr Bridget Chapman - 0:55:19
should be asking women to change the route that they might have taken and take a different route, we should be asking women to change their behavior, we people just want to walk down well lit streets and what I'm wondering is what conversations we're having about getting the streets better lit.
Scott Butler - 0:55:40
we don't have the budget to lights everywhere the spaces that people do feel unsafe, so we have a public perception survey that's life and we advertise what people tell us they don't feel safe, we work with local partners, we've improved the lighting and pay as Parker made sure that when lights to go out that we repair them quickly because we're responsible for those in areas like Batna Park we're in conversations about how we can make footpaths better late, whether it's low level lighting.
but also its fund independent, so I would love to be able to make things light of invited, I'd like to be able to make everywhere secure, it's not necessarily putting CCTV cameras in.
but again, we're working with our partners, there have been more police on the streets.
of more deliberate patrols is no, we don't want to make people take alternative boots, but it wants to be able to show people where they might feel safer and give people those options to be able to make their votes or make the better decisions so we provide people with information and people can make their own decisions up of that, but without unlimited funding we can't do everything but we're doing what we can.
thank you, I do appreciate that funding is a big issue.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:56:53
Cllr Bridget Chapman - 0:56:57
did you want to come in anyway, indicating now I was just going to
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:56:59
follow up and Scott says I'll see responsibility for Highways is Kent,
Andrew Rush - 0:57:03
and obviously we have advocacy role to bring forward things that our members want, we are happy to do that as a result of the limitations of what we can do.
I do appreciate that it's a County Council issue, but that's what I
Cllr Bridget Chapman - 0:57:22
was asking about sort of ongoing conversations about it, thank you.
Councillor Martin,
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:57:28
just a minor point here, and I just think the title of the document is
Cllr Elaine Martin - 0:57:32
very confusing because, as you quite rightly pointed out, it isn't actually a plan, the details of plan will come down until later in the year, so I just whether you you might consider changing the title of the document.
Scott Butler - 0:57:49
thank you noted the reason we call it the Community Safety Plan is to meet the statutory requirements of publishing a plan.
and where a councillor to actions, and this is a 3 year development, three authorities with some deliverables, as these are things we were going to deliver, say it's not necessarily what we'd expect to see as a plan, and it's only titled that way to meet the statutory requirements.
Councillor Wing,
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:58:18
Cllr John Wing - 0:58:19
thank you Chair, first of all, thank for the work. I am aware of the work you do do in the community and you do a fantastic job Streetlighting we do have the Joint Transport Board, which is a cross-party plus cases. Unfortunately, KCC weren't there last night were too busy sorting out their votes, but don't forget we do have the Joint Transport Board and you can put them forward and we do it through a section on street lighting actually, and we highlight KCC one of the important things about street lights when you report as a number in each straight lamp, if you will put back the KCC's finding it got you going on about this, I like the idea of technology
I was really for Holy God, apposite or holy God, up for his excellent mention at North, obviously the OSCA, and you look to him by way of works really well and I think the use of technology everybody, most people would now have a mobile phone with them and if we can do with a mow, the way-finding marks and the only thing I like to point out as Councillor there's just said, VAR I don't think many people are and they will say it's a very big subject because it includes hate crime and a lot of different things and perhaps at least as breaking down just an hour you probably can't break it down to every little bit, but it had been asked to sit broken down distances, bit smaller chunks, prep so people can understand OK, but thanks for all the work you do do
thank you, Councillor wing.
Cllr Laura Davison - 0:59:37
Councillor McConville.
thanks, Geoff Scott just yeah, just a couple of small things, I mean
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:59:45
no real issue with with the priorities I mean, they're all there were very sensible priorities and you know that being very similar to to to the focus of the last few years just in the in the delivery.
with the safe spaces. You obviously put a link in there. It'd be quite good, if you could maybe just put links to some of the other things like the local engagement meetings people might read that although they sound really good, but then that if they went to a link on it and they've got all the next ones in two weeks, I'll put that in my diary right now if there's nothing there and the same with the safety and action I don't know if there is somewhere to signpost but parent might read that will wonder what they're telling my kids at school he got linked to that.
and if possible, if it is possible just maybe Lincoln my community voice in there, I mean that's huge for for for the public, a QR code or something that that gets more engagement and uptake in that, since this is going to be a public document that you're going to probably hopefully be handing out lots officer.
thank you, Councillor McConville, good suggestions, I was gonna say,
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:00:53
similar things myself in terms of making it as practical as we can and using it as an opportunity to encourage people to either access more information or report, as some Councillors have said I did I did have a look at the local engagement meetings on our website out of date information on there, I think so it would be great to update that and just connect the website with the document as well.
any other comments from councillors.
no any final comments, Councillor Blake, Moore or Scott.
Cllr Mike Blakemore - 1:01:29
no thanks just thanks, everyone's really really good suggestions, it's pretty good, thank you.
I thank you very much for your time, the Committee this evening.
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:01:36
so we do just have to recommendations on this item to receive and note the report and provide feedback, as we've done on the plan, although I take your point, Councillor Martin, about these the word plan ahead of it being considered by the Cabinet and the Council so could I have a proposal for the recommendations?
Councillor Martin and Councillor Wing, second, thank you very much, all those in favour, thank you very much, that's unanimous OK, we are moving on.

7 Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL)

to our next item this evening, which is
the Community infrastructure Levy a number of different papers that we had in front of us, and I just wanted to draw people's intent attention to should have had a piece of paper.
at your seat, when you arrive, which should have some slight amendments to the covering report on this item.
so I'd like to invite an introduction, thank you, James.
yeah, thank you Chair.
Mr James Hammond - 1:02:48
so, as set out in the report, the this item outlines the background to the Community infrastructure Levy, which came into effect in August 2016, and also the governance arrangements that were adopted by Cabinet in June 2020.
the item itself is part of the USC work programme and it also follows a referral from Cabinet in respect of the infrastructure funding statement in in a previous item and so feedback on all aspects of the report is very much welcomed from ourselves this evening.
in terms of a flavour of what you might want to bring to the discussion, you might want to consider issues such as the priorities identified for the spend of CIL that is controlled by the District Council, you might want to consider whether or not the sufficient member oversight of the allocations that were seeking to make at this time I'd also go forward how frequently should we look to report the spend of CIL monies?
two members
in terms of the chronology, say the legislation that first brought in the community infrastructure levy that happened in April 2020, the Council did a lot of background work and finally got to the point where it could adopt its first charging schedule in August 2016.
once spend started to accumulate from qualifying development, there was then a need to look at CIL governance framework to provide the decision-making on how spend would proceed and that was adopted by Capita in June 2020, then there was a change in the leg legislation in September 2019 and that introduced a requirement for the Council to publish in infrastructure funding statement annually by the 31st of December and that is for that's a requirement on all authorities.
and for our authority where we are a still authority, so within that document we published details on both CIL contributions, but also section 1 0 6, and there's a slight, this is very important difference to make between the two, so section 1 0 6 as well as a legal obligation that,
enters into a development that ties a developer or promoter as the landowner or promoter, to make a contribution to the likes of transport, education, infrastructure, health infrastructure, et cetera, whereas CIL itself is or is a levy on development so a s even a single dwelling can.
result in a CIL payment being levied where typically Section 106 is for what is classified as major development, so normally I anything over 10 units, this is typical.
the District Council published the first IFRS in December 2020 and it's always a backward-looking audit for the previous year so that related to the 2019 2020 financial year and then the revised CIL charging schedule came into effect on the 1st of April 2020 3 and that was undertaken to bring the CIL regime in line with the adopted Core Strategy review so a Quebec context, the Core Strategy review allocates development at the garden settlement that is now known as possible as its corporate name and also some small scale expansion of salvage.
the intention there, following adoption of the Core Strategy review, was to look again at CIL and to effectively take those major development parcels out of sale, because they would deliver that infrastructure requirement through Section 1 Essex and not for sale.
in terms of the apportionment of CIL income, this is specified by the regulations that state that CIL is to be allocated as follows say there's a top-slice portion of 5% that comes off for administration and that's the phasing high to carry out various functions so the day-to-day oversight of sale in terms of income there's obviously officer involvement there. Other activity such as the CIL charging schedule examination that we went through last year there's an associated cost to undertake that process. Vapour sale is either 15% or 25% of CIL receipts that are paid to town and parish councils but only where development is taking place and this is referred to often as the meaningful proportion.
it status 15 or 25, because where does a mains neighborhood plan, then that area can take 25% of qualifying sale that arises repayments, the only made neighborhood plan that is in effect is St Mary Marsh, otherwise it's 15% say, is presented, that is 15 or 25 across the board is typically 15% with the one exception that somewhere in the mass,
which then leaves the balance of strategic sell, so that its remaining 70 to 80% typically 80, but in a few cases we set down in the March 70.
there is allocated to infrastructure projects by the District Council as the CIL authority and the intention there is to deliver or consider the delivery of important infrastructure, so when we prepare local plans, we prepare an infrastructure delivery plan that sets out the strategic level those infrastructure items are needed to support the strategic and sustainable growth in the district.
and then the District Council, under its adopted governance framework, agreed to pass over 35% of CIL receipts to Kent County Council in recognition of the important role that they play, so in terms of the infrastructure items they deliver is it is a straightforward it's a straightforward relationship that,
twice annually we pass over 35% of any receipts arising and obviously there's there's.
finance obviously support that function that we undertake and they process the the payments that qualify.
but there is also recognition through the infrastructure delivery plan, that the projects that are supported or could be supported by Strategic Cell are not always being delivered by the District Council and or KCC through the 35%, but could also consider request by by other providers say, for example, healthcare providers through the NHS.
today there's actually been.
considerable amounts of CIL receipts passed over so under the governance arrangements to KCC, to date there's been a record of just over 750,000.
through a procedure look to the end of March 2023, but if we look at the some to date on account, that is actually 1.2 8 million, and that's just by virtue of the additional payment that came in at the back end of 2023, so outside of the 2023 IFRS, because we won't report that until next year but just to give you a bit of an indication of the current figures,
and then the Districts the County Council produces its own IFRS so within that they set out what their priorities are for the spend of their proportionate amount, then say.
as of the 31st of March 2023, the District Council passed over 531,000 pounds 2000 parish councils as the neighbourhood allocation.
the total spend across all parish councils that receive funds today.
is 85, what almost 86,000, which means that there's a significant amount of 445,000 that is held by town and parish councils, that it remains unspent.
so in in in terms of how CIL funding at the disposal of Town and Parish Councils, how they could go about identifying their own priority, suspend that could be influenced at a local level by discussions between residents and their perspective to the parish councils, but also there's a key role that members of the district council can play in engaging with their town and parish councils.
this is due to break down apologies of the size, I think it's bestowed on this slight fascistic at a running list of the sums that are being passed over, so you see that considerable amounts being passed over, particularly to folks in town, council and High Town Council and there has been an amount of meaningful spend but still you can you can come and see the trend is that there's a lot of unspent moneys that are held by town and parish councils at the current time.
and just to give Members some confidence, I attended while Ashton, first of all, I prepared a briefing note for town and parish councils.
to guide them on how they can go about prioritising spend at the local level. This is actually a lot of flexibility for Town and Parish Councils in terms of what they could utilise CIL receipts towards delivering locally, and then I attended the town and parish council forum. I think it was in 2022 as set out in the report just to bring to the fore the the relevance of that guidance. Note that I prepared
so the idea there is that towns, parish councils, prepare their own mini infrastructure plans so taken on board all of the involvement in representation from local residents. They reflect that in their own tongue. Parish council plan. Today we've seen scant example of that, but there's a town parish council form, I think, is there Jenkins in a couple of weeks, so that'll be a bit of a refresher to put the material back in front of them, try and spot a bit more engagement in if they will call upon our expertise. Then of course we will help them in any way that we can
so in terms of how the
function Hive district council allocate spend.
firstly, we publish the IFRS on an annual basis
and that includes an annual update of the live document, and that is the infrastructure schedule, so we undertake dialogue with internal and external providers on an annual basis, it's also an opportunity in the RTS to reflect corporate priority projects where CIL could play a role through providing funding support or what example is,
it's actually shown in the next slide, but as the capital item on a refresh of the county of the Council's.
Binstock, so that was debated quite fully cabinet, there was a funding gap that was identified and we use the update of the IFRS to reflect that project, and it include that that project in the 2023 update.
and then there's also there's a an officer group that meets three times a year where we discuss all of the sexual Essex projects.
and then, in accordance with the governance framework that was adopted in June 2020, the allocation of CIL monies held by the District Council is authorised by the two Directors, in conjunction with the Section 1 5 1 officer, in that, as a Director of Strategy resources in the Director of Housing operations both directors and the Section 151 officer attending the
so section 6 officer working group meeting and they are actively involved in those items are the subjects for discussion.
and then this is again apologies for the size of the tax, but the two parts of this just show the party projects for the spend to soar seats, so, given the District Council holds on account circa 2.3 million,
it's now time for us to start to allocate, spend and bring forward projects where there is a demonstrable need for for some activities happened, so the biggest light item by
financial sum is focusing a brighter future, say the district council committed funds himself is as part of our qualifying match funding component in the first place and, as the design work is progressed.
obviously there's the budgets, Rwanda, not so not pressure, because the funding is what the funding is, but there are elements that we don't want to value engineer out saying components if there is a cost pressure, so we want to look to commit integrated self-funding to make sure that we can maximise the opportunities of what comes forward and you can see in the fourth column.
the there's reference there to where there's been reporting through Capita or other items that are brought to the Council, other examples Coast Drive, visitor centre landscape, engineering works and, as you read down the other example, strategic play.
and then, in terms of the role of members, member involvement represents an important overall part of the process in terms of the allocation Spencer, so that this kind of should include member discussions with Town and Parish Councils regarding the allocation spend.
asset are the third bullet. There's a clear opportunity for members to assert their views when the infrastructure funding statement is brought to Cabinet and annually and to identify the priorities to spend if the strategic sell pot and then the last bullet is just a recap of the question that I put them on the introductory slide, so it's kind of to open the for work and welcome discussion amongst amongst you will thank says, perhaps we could just leave that fired-up, so we've got the bullet points in front of us therapy helpful, thanks very much for clarifying that, because I think when the Committee were considering this item
we we didn't have a or a sort of clear sense of what feedback would be
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:17:48
useful, so I think that that's really helpful, I'll open it up to members Councillor Jones, thank you, so anybody who knows me as a town
Cllr Anita Jones - 1:17:57
councillor as well as a district councillor they'll know I'm a big fan of CIL.
I think the frustrating thing for me is that we're looking at numbers which are nearly a year old, so if I I poached the Town Clerk for that I said Well look, we've got this money but no actually we'd spent most of it on play areas last year so we have made good use of it and I just wonder whether we should be discussing this closer to March when the figures are released rather than nearly a year later it feels a bit out of date almost I don't know if that would be helpful.
but is there a reason for that?
Mr James Hammond - 1:18:34
I think historically the requirements to publish by December and even though the data will be available from the end of the financial year by the time that you've processed through the information engage with other parties say, for example Kent County Council to understand what their reflecting no IFRS that we should then reflect we we kind of piggy-back that information depending on when it tends to be released B E I think you just tend to find that a lot of councils pushing back publication towards the end of the year because of other pressures that come to the fore but there's no reason why we we we start that process proactively.
in April May but bullet how we've assembled the information, it's just.
tends to tend to affect that we published by December, but we can we can certainly it tends to be more proactive in terms of publishing, I take the point that by the time December rolls around its nine months pass that point of data capture say,
we we can take them take that out of Norway, give it some consideration if we can be quick, if we can be quicker off the mark than.
I will certainly try try to do so, yeah yeah, that's great, so looking and I feel like I like a lot of questions about what happens to the
Cllr Anita Jones - 1:19:49
District's allocation CIL and obviously we've been looking at that tonight.
and certainly has was in high there can I say work, why don't we get a little bit more of the the bigger money from the district from CIL, it does seem quite fixed and centric apart from the great stone bit, so I just wonder, how are we going to engage to make sure that the whole district is included in the allocation of CIL going forward?
Mr James Hammond - 1:20:17
it sounds like spatial representation, the the infrastructure schedule, coda sets out those strategic projects, and there's a breadth of examples where it typically is more focused around flexible highs, because you find that where there is a concentration of population you then get a concentration of infrastructure needs to support planned growth.
but yeah, we take take on board the fact that we need to have an approach that casts the the benefits of sale of that strategic level more broadly.
Councillor Martin,
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:20:58
Cllr Elaine Martin - 1:21:02
there are a couple of questions earlier, you mentioned qualifying development and I wondered what that was.
Mr James Hammond - 1:21:13
if some are Jonathan Coe misquote myself so set out in the report, but where there's the formation of new floorspace, so it doesn't have to be a new dwelling, it can be an extension where the floor space to an existing dwelling is over 100 square metres read it, you have an extension that large, but that there are some cases elsewhere where there has generated, but typically it's new dwellings, so where there's a new dwelling or new dwellings, then they would through the application process if they don't submit an exemption, so for example, self build is typically x is typically exempted from paying, so let's assume that a development example is CIL, liable but
the developer then has to submit to us a commencement notice to inform us when they're about to start development, and then we then send out a demand notice to say, yes, you are about to start development, you then need to pay the CIL amount within this time period and I set out on the demand basis where there's bigger development we can.
use our instalment policy, so if the the CIL liability is above 50,000 pounds, we can help the developer with their cashflow, by allowing payment over one, two or three pavements, depending on the summons payable.
Cllr Elaine Martin - 1:22:44
here, my second ameliorate the question is on the list of Town and Parish Councils, on page 41
Lyminge isn't mentioned, although there till so there was now, according to this there wasn't any money transferred to Lyminge and also sorry, these are two parishes in my ward and CIL Sellindge hasn't had any.
CIL payment to so, and I just wondered if you could explain those two things to me, please yeah thus correct so.
Mr James Hammond - 1:23:16
based on the data and the date by which it was published, there'd be no qualifying development, it would be summarising.
in either Salines or Lyminge at that time.
Cllr Elaine Martin - 1:23:32
so I'm just wondering why Lyminge isn't listed as stay run 0 amount transfer yeah apologies that the the list itself is not exhaustive,
Mr James Hammond - 1:23:38
I'll appreciate there are other examples where there is a 0 entry, so we'll look to publish an exhaustive amount and if it's 0 for a town or parish it will be presented in that fashion, but if there's no,
amount against the Town or Parish Council, you can just assume that, as of the end of March 2023, the cellulosic had been 0.
Cllr Elaine Martin - 1:24:08
and just a final question, and have you any suggestions how Members can encourage town and parish councils to spend their fill?
Mr James Hammond - 1:24:20
yes, certainly there are examples, so take one example. The district is currently preparing an updated local cycling walking infrastructure plan and that will showcase where there could be opportunities to invest in cycling, walking infrastructure improvements in the future, so town and parish councils might be motivated to dissects part of the route and commit certain amounts of funding as it is a local level contribution or they can look over there, they can look at examples of, say, folks and hindsight ha there has been meaningful spend and understand through case studies will have Howard Fox and Hall has gone about well, I'll say thanks, and why have I been folks in town council High Town Council? How have they gone about spending?
so many, so they just, are almost lead by example.
I think Ewan wanted to add something I do finish, Councillor Martin,
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:25:19
yes yeah, thank you Chair just a quick follow-up to that one, I think
Mr Ewan Green - 1:25:22
one of the purposes of going to the the joint tenant pack at parish council meeting with the Council and a few weeks is to actually pick up that conversation about how we can help because we are acutely aware that some of this is new and different.
but there is a significant amount of money available and we'd be very happy to engage at that level and and support where we can.
Parish Councils to develop plans for the spend.
thank you other comments, and I'll just draw people's attention back
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:25:53
to the bullet points as part of that conversation as well, Councillor Martin.
thank you, I item similar questions to my fellow Councillor Martin
Cllr Alan Martin - 1:26:01
around the list actually, and if you are adding others to the on on their IV churches, it is missing from the list, I guess the one that's really stood out to me was was lead so so typically when you look down the list the bigger town councils,
have some numbers attached, lid dust lid doesn't so, have they just been unlucky, your?
lid is actually 0 rated for sale, so sale was backed up by viability work so.
areas around Hyde and Sandgate based on a per square metre tariff, they pay is index-linked, but the base level is 125 pounds per square metre of new development that is qualifying for sale, and then it drops down either tariff basis or 125 100 75 and 50 and then late was 0rated because it was found that if there was a tariff attached to new development,
non viability grounds those sites would struggle to come forward and get off the ground if they also were burdened with CIL as a tariff.
so that there are also small pockets of Folkestone that are 0 rated and then the strategic sites themselves that will deliver through Section 1 and 6 are also is aerated, but on the back of viability.
demonstrating that the scale of section 1 0 6 contributions for education, transport, health, et cetera, was of such a scale that they couldn't afford to pay both sale and SEC, and section 6.
I think I understand.
is presented as a series of maps, that is, if you look on the updated charges schedule from last year, the charging schedule sits there as kind of the core document, but then there's a charging schedule map that covers a whole district of Brexit district down into those full zones. OK, yeah, thank you I, I guess the interesting thing is if, if Lydd is considered to be an area where developments we would struggle to absorb the the seal, which sort of suggests that the areas
deprived in some way, and arguably that would be an area that is in most need of support, building up the infrastructure when developments occur, so this is kind of an aspect of I'm thinking aloud, which isn't which is sometimes dangerous, but there's one aspect of that then it doesn't quite compete with me and I going back to one of the points earlier I wonder whether this is where the district pot could be better allocated.
interested in your thoughts on that, no, I can see the logic in the
Mr James Hammond - 1:28:43
question there, we need to remind ourselves that planned growth is when we do our local plan-making function, so we look district-wide at capacity and constraints and also site availability, and then through that process we allocate sites for development and as part of that process we
undertake infrastructure assessments to understand what infrastructure is needed to support growth in the area where growth will happen, so because of
constraints on the on the mass more broadly.
there hasn't been a scale of growth has come forward in previous local plans, so from a local plan-making context, there's not that growth requirement and therefore infrastructure requirement that sits on the back of it, the two go hand in hand, so when we then come back to the civil position and we have to demonstrate viability in order to get through examination,
I take the point that you need growth happens and then levy a charge, so then build up a pot.
but.
we can't we can't kind of circumvent the way in which we undertake our CIL charging schedule work to either.
leaving a charge or 0 rate in area
I know the phraseology sounds as a we're not may be given the opportunity, but we we.
that is not the intention at all, we just have to 0 right, based on the data that is independently verified, it's yeah, if it is, it's just the outcome of that exercise.
yeah, thank thank you for that one and then.
Cllr Alan Martin - 1:30:28
actually slightly surprised that there isn't something that forces the parish and town councils to spend to spend the money, I mean, I accept the fact there's probably some criteria that the they can't just spend it on on anything but given the given the whole purpose of of this.
it strikes me that Council shouldn't be allowed us to sit on that money indefinitely.
no for point, they can't effectively, so they've got five years in
Mr James Hammond - 1:30:58
which, to 5 years after receiving payment, they have to spend that money or otherwise, return it to the district council, so every time a payments aren't over, we detail out what was a qualifying planning permission, planning, application, reference, we know the date the payment was made and,
when we engage with town and parish councils in a few weeks we will bring that very much of their attention to say some of you are in danger of timing out, so we didn't actually receive our first payment on account for quite some time after CIL went live because even though I lie on go live date was the start of August 2016 by the time you get qualifying permissions come through, the system get planning and then they've got the charge levied against them. There was a definite time lag, which was to be expected and also inevitably, as a flow of applications that came in just before Sale came into effect to avoid having that that levy charge
so it is incumbent on those town and parish councils to keep a record of when the payments were arising and spent accordingly, otherwise we've got as good reason to collect those monies back.
yeah, thank you for that, it now makes more sense to me how we as
Cllr Alan Martin - 1:32:18
members can actually encourage it, because the the clock is ticking, so which is kind of guiding them with their decision making so yeah,
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:32:25
thank you, thank you, Councillor Martin,
Councillor Wing
furniture or moving onto the questions.
Cllr John Wing - 1:32:33
the second question is member oversight of the civil allocation appropriate at this time, I feel myself as a re-elected, I mean I was a member before as well, I don't think it is, I think we need more, I mean I don't think a lot of Members are still confused about what CIL is and the difference between soon and we're S. 1 0 6 and we need to know more and I would love to know more.
engage with housing councils to spend that money. You'd be putting some money is yet to be spent and as we found out we didn't get spent, it gets sent back anyway and how frequently should so be spent, I think is Councillor Jones said, yearly be nice made. I understanding the strengths of no new information and yeah, it would be nice to know how much each parish councillor, even if it's 0, it would be nice to know that, so we know when we can go to our parish councils if we we all retain monthly meetings and say you got this money, but how are you spending it DuVernay helped, you want me to find out what's the best way to spend it or because you know
as Councillor Martin says, the clock is ticking.
Mr James Hammond - 1:33:41
by all points well made, and I certainly received. This is just me think out loud, so it could be that the end of March is the cut off for the financial year, and Members might want to be furnished with the data as soon after the end of March to understand, and then there could be that process of thinking well how much has arisen in the last year and is there any opportunity for for that engagement to bring priorities onto the list? But I go back to the point that strategic infrastructure we've gone through that continuous check and balance with infrastructure providers. So what we can't do is invent an infrastructure item because you can't we, we were not the providers of certain infrastructure, so we know, for example, is an acute need for healthcare. We're not shying away from that at all, but if men, if Members were to say there's a certain infrastructure item that we want to see delivered would have to take great care to make sure that it fits with the requirements of what is actually needed, so
it's not to say that we're not in listening mode, we very much are, but we need to make sure that we adhere to the rules of engagement on infrastructure delivery. Does it have to be infrastructure? I mean I can one parish council where I'm a member, what's springing up elderly people, and I know they want to bring these services like NHS locally so that the residents can go, get more local pubs, they have to be infrastructure, are you are building or can it use other services to help that service survive, we've got one of me yeah, it has to be
Cllr John Wing - 1:35:12
Mr James Hammond - 1:35:14
typically capital spend so it can't be revenue to support ongoing costs, ongoing resource costs,
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:35:21
yeah, thank you, Chair, I just think picking up on the the response
Mr Ewan Green - 1:35:24
from James's and comments from members were very happy to take away and think through how we can have that that earlier oversight and other engagement with members so you've got that information earlier in the year which I think is a very valid point and think through the reporting process as well, I think that's a I'm taking that as a very strong point coming from members.
two hands, I can didn't quite see who is first Councillor McConville,
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:35:48
then Councillor Butcher.
thank you.
a couple of cutlet points I mean.
Cllr Connor McConville - 1:35:56
can't resist saying that you know personally, you know a 2 2 million plus seafront apartments I think they could afford both, but you know I just thought I have to I'd say that.
a couple of things.
equally interested just looking in to point to the table so CIL, invoiced and CIL received, I mean there's there's quite a gap, I don't know if you just say a little bit about that and is that.
those funds are expected to come in, but I mean it, is there a certain amount that we just don't get every year, what happens with that was the process.
yeah, thank you, so the the reason why does the differences that we
Mr James Hammond - 1:36:38
last spoke earlier about the instalment policy, so when we say invoiced, we've told the qualifying party that they are liable for for a seriously and often quite a large one if the instalment policy kicks in and nobody track into.
payments are saying Well, it might only be one pavement from quite a large overall payment that will be split into three different.
payments by instalments, so there's always that gap and then also.
the there has been instances where the liable party has been informed that they owe a CIL payment, and they just plain ignored the requirement, so we have taken action internally through debtors to obviously chase down that.
so the tip, though well as the sole payment arising or the new development.
it goes on as a land charge entry, so any solicitor checking through the paperwork for a sale purchase should pick up on that liability and make both sides aware of that that fact, so it doesn't, it doesn't tend to happen very often that there's a civil liability outstanding that site is sold on and another party comes into into being that was not aware it tends to be the case that we've identified a party,
they they've ignored the requirement to pay the sale and, to be honest, we chase them down and chasing down hard, and I think I told him I don't want to misquote the data, but we've only got a handful of non-payers the way he's got a couple of non-payers where that's quite a large sum then all of a sudden it looks you you're looking at a situation that you're thinking.
gossip figures, collar chasing away from myself, but yeah, we we do have a very active.
team that is chasing down in our April success rate, it's been good at securing those pavements, but.
we can't always Mikado was achieved 100%, because it's some kind of a real-world scenario, unfortunately.
thanks for that.
Cllr Connor McConville - 1:38:59
and interest in terms of, I guess it, it'd be quite instinctive to know in again what you sort of how it breaks down to to the Paris's annually, but
there was a point made earlier that you know it doesn't always sort of it's not always proportional to to the district, in terms of where the money comes from and where it gets sent out.
but it would be quite interesting to know if we could, if we, if we can, the amount of money that we can give onto KCC and how much of cases how much they then put off that put back into our district where they are they taking the bulk of the money and spending it in Tunbridge or it'd be quite good to know how a breakdown their allocation so we we could see right we've given them this March and but they've only put this much back in in terms of what they're doing, that would be, there would be quite an interesting for the data though certainly they are obliged to spend there
Mr James Hammond - 1:39:54
so that we pass over the 35% within the district, and I don't have it in front of me because I've still got a PowerPoint presented, but within the report there is a graphic that shows West KCC have committed funds, we passed over so they'd done, some highway works around Bartosz Bridge in Hive the, I think there's a signalised crossing that was delivered.
and they also make a commitment towards funding a futures strategic waste project, just to give a bit of oversight if the kind of projects they're looking at delivering. But then, if you look at the long list, I think it's better reflected in their IFRS to give you that fuller picture, but it'll typically be down to highways waste or community projects. Education was taken out of the sale through the 2023 update that we did, because KCC didn't want to confuse the outside world, the developer community, to say it might be sexual Essex, it might be sale, so we just took a hard line and they said we won't commit any of the CIL funding to all sexual assets because developers were starting to get a little bit confused
so sexual and sex for education, no prospective sale, money being used to deliver education, which is why waste is is a relatively good fit, because you can collect it from all parts of the district and filter into one location, so so works quite well in that context.
I mean, in terms of you mentioned earlier, the the cycling walking
Cllr Connor McConville - 1:41:32
infrastructure plans I mean, are they not and I they're not KCC based, would they not use their cases, Cecil, to do some of that, because you were sort of saying maybe the town and parishes get involved or are they not doing that is that why that that route might need to be looked into?
so two things happened in case you see it on their own district, what
Mr James Hammond - 1:41:51
a county-wide walking cycling for such a plan and, at the same time, the District Council were also updating refreshing hours, so hopefully those two documents will talk to one another, our priorities will be obviously district focus Kent's will be county focused but there are three routes out of the 15 countywide that interact with our district, so from that point of view we're fortunate.
when I talk about the spend of Town and Parish Council bunnies on potentially walking cycling, I mean very localised intervention, so around lasagne, for example, HIV, there could be certain connections where actually some quite localised signage.
improvements could make a big difference in network connectivity.
I'm not saying that it should be down to haste to solve that because I'll say it's a continuous network that typically KCC managers, but given the pressures of finances, it could be a space that Tunnel Parish Council would say Well, they all see what this cycle plan has identified it, we will it's happened we might utilise some of our funding to make it happen rather than just wait to see.
what comes out of government settlement to Kent County Council they might want to take that on board?
it's definitely not something that sort of you know in looking at sort of CIL and at a town and parish, that you know, we did a lot of work
Cllr Connor McConville - 1:43:16
again with play, parks and figure. I think that's not sort of anything I've sort of considered before, so I'll I'll say I'll take it on board in terms of the the bottom point there, obviously we reports come in in terms of capital projects that the budget allocation the proportion of that which is the CIL. I think it be quite good once those projects are completed. Just like you won't sleep, once the financial year has ended, you can see
that's what we budgeted for, and that's what we actually spent, so something like that, I think it'd be quite good in terms of three years ago, we said we were going to send this much still on this project and now the projects done and where do we end up something like that I think you know how that gets reported that I think that'd be quite beneficial.
Mr James Hammond - 1:44:06
they thus that sounds logical in terms of we've also done an exercise where we tried to project as best we can what CIL receipts could arise in future years.
the notice is a case of what you know, and so we know from allocated sites we can profile with a degree of confidence this site will come forward in this timeframe, this would then give rise to this level of CIL payment.
but a lot of I'm a lot of CIL that comes forward is actually for windfall developments, so land parcels or sites that don't benefit from a local plan allocation that come forward, so as soon as we know, the detail of that we can input into that trajectory but so until it arises are planning applications than committed we we can't test it with any kind of rigour.
but typically it's profiling around about a million pounds for so incoming here is the gross number and the North Sea actually net that down to what the district council controls is a proportion of that million, but it's actually is it's tracking quite consistently at that kind of level, thank you before we go to Councillor Berkshire, I'm really conscious that it's chilly and here is something wrong with the
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:45:18
heating this evening I think so if Members need to step out and get a cup of tea or anybody to warm up, please do that Councillor Butcher,
yeah thanks Chase, there's something about the strategic still, something about neighborhoods, so that at first when what we identify
Cllr James Butcher - 1:45:31
priorities fulfill.
and I guess I now make would help us to understand, not necessarily this minute but at some point, one of the criteria for something being included in that list.
I mean, they will do a really really good things, but what hasn't been included and, if not, why not, and how do something kind of come on the shortlist you taught just taking Ling's point about district wide and you know the view you were expressing. Well, there aren't really the kind of infrastructure opportunities outside of the big conurbations. I guess people in the north downs wards or Rodney Marsh, might kind of beg to differ about that, but what what what would be the process by which something might come forward and how do we make sure people feel yeah, there's this funding and it's it's been kind of fairly allocated and there's been a kind of proper process rather than it being will be once again facing the highest and very nicely out of them, and then I'll come on to the neighborhood
yeah, thank you. So the long list is would like to put lumbered at,
Mr James Hammond - 1:46:28
but we're talking probably 100 infrastructural items as live items on the infrastructure schedule, so that's a long list, and that's where we go out to internal or external providers as annual check, we say what are your infrastructure requirements looking like typically based on the infrastructure delivery plan that underpinned our local plan, so the parent document it seems structured, so if you plan that has a five-year revolving cycle and then the infrastructure funding statement is your annual refresh, so when we say items from cabinet, if there were the scale that there should be reflected on the infrastructure schedule, we put them in
so the the less we've prioritised, I think it's is at 6.00 or seven don't have the slide in front of me, so from that long list of 100 we've identified six or seven, where we want to see meaningful spend and some of them are time-critical, so we kind of need to be moving forward with those.
how otherwise would get put on the list bus route, for example local engagement, so on that long list of 100, if, if this conversation with officers internally through our group also members, say that through representation in your own awareness of infrastructure that you'd like to elevate and understand if a sort of project can be brought forward as a priority then we'd welcome those conversations certainly we worked as well as the infrastructure provider say.
it is now time critical on on these pieces of infrastructure, so, from a strategic priority point of view for shrieks and hide its condensing down that long destined to what's really time-critical, so folks, in the brighter future, that'll start being delivered in the next 12 months, so we need to commit some funding towards that.
and these projects on the landslip that needs attention, so that's an critical.
also the play area that the coastal park plus a destination we ought to keep it as an attraction to Folkestone, so that's time, thus becoming time critical for a refresh, the been projects are time-critical, so it's just understanding on that timeline where the projects fit in and what money can we prioritise to to make things happen?
thank you, and I know that there was just that bit about, yes, member representation, all that kind of thing that all sounds a kind of a bit
Cllr James Butcher - 1:48:47
loose, and we all know about that and if we became aware of potential projects, what's the process again looking for an answer particularly now but it just feels a little bit unclear I suppose and maybe not as transparent as it might be.
yeah, I think I just add to that. Sorry, you know just just building
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:49:07
on on that point, I mean, I think, certainly as a kind of ordinary Council member, it hasn't been clear really how you would contribute to that prioritisation process or put forward suggestions in the way that you're indicating, as I think Councillor butchers right so thinking about ways that that could perhaps be formalised or structured in a way, because one person's priorities might not be somebody else's priorities and there's potentially a kind of equalities issue there around around that, so I mean a lot of the in the in the schedule. There's a lot of kind of play, space items that are not prioritised, so you know there might be people who take a different view in relation to to that, so you are thinking about ways that we could maybe have a just a flow chart or a structure that explains how how members can try and contribute in that way, and therefore residents can contribute in that way as well, it would be helpful you and you're probably gonna have to say all those things I've just said.
we're doing on the other as well as you have, so thank you, I'm very
Mr Ewan Green - 1:50:16
happy to take that away and think it through, thank you.
any other comments, sorry, Councillor Birch was not willing to do it
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:50:22
Cllr James Butcher - 1:50:25
within just about the neighborhood bit and well, there was something in the Town and Parish Council guidance about is the salesman to incentivise communities to welcome and promote development.
wishes convey laudable aim, but I've yet to meet anyone who welcomes and promotes development, but that's for me, I think, partly because they have a proposed development, we've got one in Denzel at the moment, I don't think people see any connection where things they might ask for that would make that more palatable could subsequently presumably be funded by a CIL allocation. Is that right? So if they were saying OK, we could live with this development if this thing was done.
Mr James Hammond - 1:51:10
I can see the concepts but low when it comes to developer contributions, so we're talking strictly about sexual or sex, there has to pass the relevant tests, so there's very clear tasks that apply to what obligations can the local planning authority.
secure against the development they can't go. Sarah was kind enough to almost view sale as an added benefit that is outside of this fear of section 1 0 6 so it's attendants, opera dental denser was actually high Solway area. So where development happens in Denzel, even if it's of a fairly modest size, there'll be a CIL payment coming forward and there's an allocation in Denzel. So at some point, if that slight came forward, there'd be quite a reasonable CIL payment that would be paid to the District Council and then we would pass on the 15% to Densole, so I think the way of looking at it is to almost a packet to say Well, it's an allocated site, developments going to happen, but having the knowledge of what that CIL receipt might look like, and that'll be, that'll be
that will be specified, or should be specified in the planning application report, as is other benefits, so it's almost trying to get hole trying to get hold of that data and then working out how that could benefit the local community outside of sexual Essex.
yeah, I think it's just again that's all a bit mysterious and not transparent to people, and there's something about getting in early.
with developments as as people are kind of getting cross, not quite sure what to do about it, and I guess us all being aware well that there is a route but thinking about the spend or lack thereof. It seems what's happening as the development happens, there's some still attributable to it, and it might be some years before that money gets spent so that there's a kind of loss of the opportunity to say yes, you've had to put up with development, but look at the great improvements being able to make, and there was no kind of quick and easy answer to that, but I think something about certainly I'm feeling like I need to know a lot more about this to be able to
it kind of worked with Parish and Town Councils and, by the way, that it should be Hawkinge Town Council. I think it's referred to as Parish Council in this document, but if it is Town Council and just something about the transparency, when you look at that table, obviously is
Cllr James Butcher - 1:53:34
gonna be good reasons for a below OK so hasten Council kind of big allocation hawking's very small allocation. I guess you'd kinda think Shirley Hawkins got loads of development going on, but that's maybe something about the timescales or something that is again if the public were to look at that, if I was living in Hawkinge, I'll be thinking wow we've kind of with kind of why aren't we getting more CIL? Given the level of development
I should understand how that feeling could connive express itself
Mr James Hammond - 1:54:02
through local frustration, so a lot of development that was permitted in Hawkins came in before CIL came into effect, the issue, then, is that you have a build-out rate so
the a lot of the sites were permitted in the early 2000, tens, then another slope Otway and then CIL becomes public knowledge over time, and then the obvious question is will where CIL, arising from while unfortunately it won't arise because it was it, it predated.
but even if, for what we're, what you tend to see on larger sites is that a promoter will come in with an outline application.
that will go through the procedure.
the pilot pressure being assessed if outline planning consent has been granted, you don't actually collect sale until you've got the detail of the reserved matter application, so an outline consent Cridland say now by the time that goes through its consultation review it might be some time before it goes to committee, then it needs a section 1 0 6 to be signed before the permission could be released so that could take more time if it's not already presented at Planning Committee, then you need to wait for the reserved matters, so the actual detail of what will be contained on that sites come forward that will need to go through Planning Committee unless is delegated that takes time then the developer needs to then think about how will I start to bring that site forward?
spade in the ground type scenario, well, I'll build all the infrastructure of the connecting infrastructure, the access road or the other connections, and you don't actually see a CIL payment until it has qualified floorspace.
so it could be the time that could be any number of years, even on a medium-sized site. You're thinking well that was submitted in 2018, and so Parliament might not have yet been paid across that's not uncommon, maybe not that extreme in 220 18, I'll be so put over timed out, but it could be a number of years so yeah, that's really helped. Thank you know, I think there's just something about how we help
Cllr James Butcher - 1:56:11
everybody understand that just going back to this is meant to help people reconcile themselves to development and it doesn't feel like it's doing that job yet, but it has the potential to analyse and November yeah. We're understanding. Thank you
I am conscious of the time I just seem to more hands. Go whoa that's
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:56:26
fine, I want people to have the chance to contributed. It's obviously a very broad item. There's a lot to bring in Councillor Chapman had not spoken on this yet it was a really quick point, building on what
Cllr Bridget Chapman - 1:56:33
Councillor, but you were saying. I think what we're saying is we need some kind of narrative to go alongside the report to
I understand you explain it really well and I understand a lot more, and I think some of that explanation would be useful for for for residents, and I wonder if there's some way that we could have a one page narrative that went with it that gave some kind of overview for people.
I think that's a really good suggestion in a bit like the plan that we
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:57:03
were considering earlier, but something that would explain to people to residents what what salience, what section 26 is and how it works.
Cllr Anita Jones - 1:57:12
Councillor Jones, did you want to come back in very quickly it was I was having a conversation about this last week, actually with the planning department, and they said we really really need to actually every time we spend CIL on something exciting for residents, we need to tell them that the money came from CIL because I don't think we always do that, certainly in HIV, as as my town council role, I've been timed it well, we've built a lot of play areas with so, but I don't know whether we actually said at the time. This is where the money came from, so a little bit of media out there, and then people, so people will reconcile themselves with development, does bring great infrastructure. Perhaps is a positive note. I think, too, to draw
Mr James Hammond - 1:57:54
things to a conclusion on. Are you open if if Councillors have other
Cllr Laura Davison - 1:57:57
thoughts following the committee that we can send those in after the meeting just because I'm conscious it is such a big topic and there might be other thoughts that the members have after
yeah
OK, that's great, thank you alright thanks very much for your time and we've just got the two recommendations to receive and note the report and to offer reflections as we have on the items that are listed in the front of the report so do we have a proposal for those recommendations? Councillor Butcher secondary Councillor wing are all in agreement. Thank you, I've seen councillors putting their coats and their gloves on during the course of that item it, it is really Chile, not Councillor McConville, he's fine, it's tropical for him,
do you do you want to have five minutes to get a cup of tea or are people, OK, do you want to press on press on press on okay, we were moving to our final item, then, in that case,
which is a discussion about the resolution passed at Full Council for the formation of a Folkestone and Hythe youth district council really interesting item
Adrian would you like to introduce the item, thank you.

8 2023 Full Council Resolution - Folkestone & Hythe Youth District Council

Adrian Tofts - 1:59:12
yes, thank you very much, so this report follows on from the resolution to Full Council last year.
to establish a use district council, where there were three elements to the resolution, so one was to refer to this committee, a report on establishing a Youth Council.
one element was to invite current representatives of Kent's county council to to give their views on on how their scheme is operating and, and the last element of the resolution was to survey schoolchildren in this district about whether they would support a Youth Council.
so in looking at this topic I I spoke to officers, from Kent County Council and from Dartford Swale and Thanet about the Youth Councils and the youth forums that they run in in their areas, and I asked him about what worked well and what didn't work and and also what kind of resources did it take so?
just quickly running through them.
Kent's Youth Council is obviously a large scheme because it covers the county, it's quite a formal scheme, the Youth Councillors are formally elected.
the campaign on manifestos and they hold elections in local schools, and also there is the elections, are also held online and people can vote online.
the Youth County Council holds 12 meetings throughout the year monthly and there is also a residential weekend in summer and no training at key activities as well, they they're running three campaigns this year, so there's a campaign on free school meals and poverty campaign on public transport and also,
campaign on mental health and wellbeing.
and the members of the Kent Youth County Council can address Kent's cabinet and scrutinise Kent's.
Council business Dartford scheme is also the members are elected and there is also a monthly series of meetings, it's kind of seems to be a bit more independent of the borough council.
there is an Executive Committee of Youth Councillors, there are seven Members who drive forward the business of the of the Youth Council and it it focuses on activities like charity fundraising and taking part in a national Youth Parliament, and also activities around young mayors groups and and and that those kinds of activities,
swale runs a you Forum, so it's a badge as a forum rather than the Council, and it's a very long running scheme, it's not elected, so the young people volunteer for it, it holds six meetings a year and it ça, it deals with similar kinds of issues that the young people identify so.
issues around mental health and there's some career and sort of skills.
the guidance and also active travel and and things like that.
lastly, Senate district council runs a youth council that's a more recent scheme, it's been going for around a year again.
young people volunteer for it, they aren't elected and are a big selling point is is the training, opportunities and skills development that this scheme allows, the young people meetings are again monthly and they can scrutinise the the work that Senate district officers do, and I can act as a sort of consultant body to to to the the council to to give their views on on on policies and projects.
so there's a brief overview, as you see the quite a variety of approaches you know, as as regards how the young people are chosen for the role, whether they are elected or whether they volunteer, how often the groups meet how formal or informal the groups are and I I think also really how close the relationship is with this kind of hosting authority.
so section 4
this can kind of summarises some of the points.
I think that the great benefits to Youth Council, they bring new perspectives to the Council's operations and and the way it develops and rolls out its services, and also, I, I think, a very important point his day, it's a very valuable learning experience for the young people themselves and in getting sort of life skills but,
I think there is a big caveat with that one, and the main lesson from the people I spoke to is that it's got to be properly resourced, really because there is a continual turnover of young people, because at those ages they are.
kind of going off into college or taking up apprenticeships or
going in so to work, kind of stroke training opportunities.
and so, if you don't continually renew that kind of intake of of young people, then what one of the councils found is that one or two of the better resource schools come to dominate the the council and it loses that kind of diversity.
also the children themselves have got to be empowered and supported in their roles, many will never spoken in public before, and many will never have attended a formal meeting, so you can't just invite them and expect them to get on with pictures, and lastly, there's a lot of back of house administration in putting together the agendas and the meetings and reporting back on what has happened afterwards and how,
the
the Youth Council's decisions and comments have have influenced council policy.
so that said, it is a it if we had won here, it would be an additional budget sort of burden that currently there aren't resources identified for this.
so that would have to be resourced or else.
resources would have to be found from elsewhere and and would need to stop doing something else.
so.
lastly, coming back to the resolution, it had three parts to it, and the first part was to report back, so hopefully the the report in front of you fulfils that remit and provides more information on on the types of Youth Council there are or NGO forums.
the second part was that you've county councillors, who represent the Folkestone district, be invited to speak to members here and I spoke to the person who runs Kent's scheme and she said she would be happy to do ask them if they wanted to appear.
to talk about their scheme, as you can see in the report in Appendix 2 that there are this year, there are four Members representing this district.
and the last part was that secondary schools could be could be contacted.
with a questionnaire to see what kind of.
appetite there is for Youth Councils within this district.
that could be arranged through Kent County Council, but I would also point out that.
most of the youth councils and youth forums that I've looked at do look wider than schools, it's not just school pupils', it might be, you know, young people in college or young people in apprenticeships, those who are home educated are and also those who are not in any kind of education, employment or training as well, so it's whether we would want to
whether we would want to go out to that wider group really so.
that's the kind of quick run through the report and welcome any comments or questions from Members. Thank you. Thank you very much for
Cllr Laura Davison - 2:08:09
that clear, summary, urgent and for the work that's been done to bring the report to the Committee this evening and there are two sections. I think that we're particularly being asked to comment on, so when Members are contributing, if you could just make make clear which section you're speaking to, so we're being asked us to comment on the different approaches to youth councils and youth forums as set out in the report, and I think Adrian was particularly drawing attention to the way in which
the young people might come forward to take part things like frequency of meetings and how they operate, and their link with the with the District Council, whose area therein, and then Part 4, to look at the actual three elements of the resolution that we pass collectively as Councillors and we need to provide some recommendations as to the next steps in relation to those, so if Members could just bear that in mind when they're contributing and just make clear which bit you're speaking to that'd be really helpful, I shall open it up.
Councillor Jones, I'm really pleased to see this is coming forward,
Cllr Anita Jones - 2:09:18
I've got, as she hides first Youth Forum happening next month, we've set it up, we've been discussed at youth councils and we discussed forums, and we thought we would try inviting a number of children from all the schools in Hive and we're gonna get them together to discuss I've given them a list of topics to discuss, so I don't know how that's going to go, but I thought we should try and we should get started with something because it's really important to hear the voices of young people
we've been talking about infrastructure, for example, this evening they've probably got a lot of.
opinions on that, we did escape heart consultation about a month ago and again amazing the responses you get is not what I thought we would get, so it's really important, as she listened to, what people really need within our district, so
I'm really keen that we do something with this, I wonder whether a forum might be a start.
and then we can perhaps develop it into a council if it's successful, but I think you have to have a starting point and by inviting a number of students from each of the schools represented in the district, the or perhaps the senior schools would be a start.
but it's a big thing to do for the first time so, but I think that's a really good example, so I'd people might have other opinions, but elections and taking that forward can be quite complicated, so perhaps approaching the schools they will have school councils so they have people who are already talking to people within their schools so those representatives actually have already been elected within their schools, so perhaps that is a way forward.
and we have a forum where we we get started and we start listening to the young people, I don't know a lot to think about really isn't there thanks to Councillor Jones, and did you have any points in terms of?
Cllr Laura Davison - 2:11:11
the the items within the resolution in terms of hearing from the Kent Youth Councillors, for example, and the survey.
Cllr Anita Jones - 2:11:24
that would be useful, and again I think the survey could be sent to the school councils within all of our secondary schools. That seems illogical because they'd been chosen as representatives for their schools, so a survey would be a useful way forward and it would be good to hear how our county councillors in the district actually think this could work as well as again if the danger of us saying how it should work is that it's not going to be a Youth Forum or a Youth Council, so we need to actually hear how they think it should work, otherwise it's gonna be our version of it yeah, I think that's absolutely key
other members
Cllr Laura Davison - 2:12:01
Councillor Martin,
thank you, I, I think I'd echo everything you've you've said there
Cllr Alan Martin - 2:12:10
really, I think the thing that really struck me. So looking at the different systems, the KCC one sounded both awesome, awesome and ridiculously complicated and and detailed, and maybe at a county level you can justify that and its good looks something like that happens and young people from our area and get involved in that, if they're really minded to do so, we probably don't need to replicate. That was my biggest view, so I think it is a case of keeping it simple. I I probably would narrow it down to just going out to the schools and colleges because they're easy to identify. I think you know trying to market this to people who are being educated at home or whatever we're probably creeping into the too difficult pile there. I'd also be tempted, I agree. An election is probably a complication and I think I knew any of us enjoy those really doing so
but maybe that's a question pay can only be less a question back out to the to the school, so may me if, if we had a list of schools and colleges and for instance, there's two people that you're wanting from the Marsh Academy LA maybe you let the Marsh Academy decide how they choose.
the there are two people or, and they could run that as an election if they wanted to but kind of push it back on the schools to do some of the or the organising, and then in terms of the the resource side, I think the trick here is to is to come up with worthwhile topics that are actually meaningful to the Council and why I really hate about these things. It's like when you're going to work away day and you have a brainstorm on something, and it's not going to go anywhere, and it's a, it's just a team-building waste of time, so I think it's really important that this is something that is meaningful and a genuine
topic that we as a Council are keen to get young people's contributions to, and if it is, we won't have a resource issue, because it's something that we need to be thinking about anyway. So I think the trick for us is to be selective and to identify topics where all of us in the Chamber want to resolve that topic and want the Council to spend resource on it, and it's a topic where it's helpful to get input in from others and when it's in that sweet spot I don't think we'll be fretting about the the resource at all. Thanks to Councillor Martin, Councillor Chapman,
Cllr Laura Davison - 2:14:33
I suppose where I'm starting with this is what we try to achieve with
Cllr Bridget Chapman - 2:14:34
this, and for me it's two things, really, it's it, it's it's educating young people about the democratic process and how it works, and demystifying that for them and enabling them to kind of share that with their peers.
it is also about getting their input into the into the stuff that we're doing at the moment, and that's what we want to hear their voices, don't we agree with the they're the future we need to, we need to know what they're thinking about things, so with the first thing in terms of demystifying the process and how it all works, I do think we should be working towards elections because I think it's really important, ultimately they're going through that process, but I think that you're absolutely right that's when we can't start there, we need to maybe start with the forum and then work up to that, but I do think that is ultimately a key part of what we're trying to achieve with this.
in terms of
pushing it back on schools as an ex teacher, there's just no capacity really in schools these days, unless we want to end up with just the grammar schools involved, and that's not what I want. I want to see a much wider variety of of people inputting into this, so I'd like to see us going more widely and I think it's really important that we're hearing from the people that are young people who are not in education, employment or training. I really want to hear what they've got to say about things I'd love to hear from the people that are already serving on the county
what's the word I'm looking for?
thank you, thank you, that's it, sorry, I'm coldness been a long day, yes, I'd like to hear from them and I think I think I said it would be really good, but again without.
we've gotten.
there's nobody and there's no resources, and I don't want to create extra work for people, but I think it's important we go wider than schools if possible thanks to Councillor Chapman, so we've got some
Cllr Laura Davison - 2:16:34
sort of different thoughts around that two other colleagues want to come in.
Councillor Butcher, then Councillor McConville.
yes, just to really support that starting point of bringing can't represent a decision and just hearing their views, rather than trying
Cllr James Butcher - 2:16:47
to double guess what that might be, and I think it's also an opportunity to have been touched on this earlier about our ways of engaging and having conversations and sharing views and all of those things and it was making me think about citizens' assemblies as you know that that's a different way that communities come to views about things so I think it's an opportunity to be really creative.
about we about how we engage with young people, that might teach us some things about how to engage with the community more broadly.
thanks and for all, and thanks for the report, a very fair informative.
Cllr Connor McConville - 2:17:25
obviously did quite a lot of sort of looking around, but you know the information of this one.
talk to the leader of found it, and all the rest went out before I put the motion to Council, so you know both, I've talked to people where at work, where there were they've identified areas, you know if, if they had the resource they could improve it or they want to do that. But I think the key point is
whatever this becomes, and hopefully it does become something that it is led by by the young people, so obviously the report mentions there is a small bit of resource there to undertake a bit more of a wider survey, so I really hope that that would happen and be as wide as be as wide as possible.
have good thought as to what we're asking, both in terms of establishing something but also you know, what, what what are the outcomes of it and you know?
where does where does it go where we were with the young people wanted to wanted to lead to yeah, I mean in terms of the various sort of models.
now, in any anything, that sort of gives young people more of a volume into into their area, you know, they're eventually going to.
grow up and we've sadly, especially in my ward, there is huge swathes of apathy, apathetic residents that they don't vote, that they're not engaged, so if we can, we can try and address that that generational cycle in some way.
I think it's excellent, I think there is a lot of.
not demand, but the interest in this, obviously the former members of the Kent Youth Council, in our area who are ill, I met with all of them, and I spoke at length with all of them have met the new ones yet, but I'm sure I shall,
with it we know over the course of the year they were obviously really really keen to have something more localised again, which led to the business being put forward in the first place, but the PPS, PSG teachers
at the Turner and at the Academy, both very keen to deliver this as part of their PSC. Currently you know things that they do throughout the year very happy to welcome Members officers, anyone from the Council to to talk about the potential for this and gauge views of those in those sort of forums and lessons
similarly, the college, where our work
this, we have good student engagement and they ramp up yeah, I would hope there would be no similar it sort of down on the Marsh.
I know full well that there is those aspirations for this, the hobby and the girls' grammar and all the other secondary schools around so yeah I think I think the schools would welcome it as sort of coming in and having that just having that discussion but but yeah I mean in terms of in terms of the resolution obviously just utilising that that's that small bit of budget for for for a survey to give us some real good data as to where we go with this next and just just use that as as focused as focused targeted as we cancer to get best best value out of that.
Cllr Laura Davison - 2:20:58
thanks, Councillor McConville, any other Councillors who have not come in on this Hunter.
to speak, no okay, I mean, I think everybody seems very clear that we would like to hear from the Kent Youth Councillors about their thoughts on this, in whatever way that's best to do that works for them.
so if we can make that one of the recommendations that we that we do pursue that, that item, which has a point 2 in the in the in that section of the report.
and
I think in he said Adrian the the. This report obviously has come before us, but I think it would be good to keep the Committee involved as the process evolves, so it would be if, if other Members think that's a good idea to to kind of have that come back to the Committee, perhaps after the surveys taken place, which again I didn't hear anyone, say we shouldn't do the survey but bearing in mind the resource, perhaps we could look at where councillors might have links into groups if it's or if it can be a bit wider than just the schools where councillors might have links saying I'm thinking particularly because of the fact that we know that youth services are under pressure at the moment, so it is even more important to find ways of connecting with with young people to hear what they they would like to to
See evolve. I think
does that
is there any member who would oppose that as a way forward or does it sound sensible, yeah, I'm seeing nods.
K
so I think we've covered the things, is there any other points or recommendation that anybody would like to put forward?
well, just to say, I mean you know once once the results of the survey
Cllr Connor McConville - 2:22:53
come back in on him and come back to the committee, perhaps that would be a good time for for for the KCC members to join us as well, I mean, I think if we can once we get to a point where where that's there you know we have some sort of poster with a QR code that links to it and then members can go out into the forums where where they will.
where they know young young people are and you know so we can get outside of the schools, but you know put some of the put some of the resource on us.
go into various centres and organisations, we have links with and and make sure people can see it and engagements.
and what do you think would be a realistic timeframe, Adrian for, I
Cllr Laura Davison - 2:23:37
don't want to put you on the spot, but her?
Adrian Tofts - 2:23:42
yeah, I'd have to have to think about that one and get back with the committee want to see proposals for the survey in advance of it going out and how we propose to get it to young people or yeah, I think that that will be good, I mean I guess potentially we could circulate those
Cllr Laura Davison - 2:24:03
to the members of the Committee to have a look at.
once they are ready.
yeah, I could send it to all Councillors for their input.
because, obviously, the decision was taken by Full Council originally.
do you want to have a sort of think about timeframe and perhaps let us know, and then we can circulate that to people?
Adrian Tofts - 2:24:28
Cllr Laura Davison - 2:24:31
OK, if there's nothing further on that one, then we need to receive and note the report note the different approaches that we've talked through note the key issues and resource implications. Note the responses to the resolution and provide our recommendations which will finesse the wording but essentially yes to hearing from the Kent Youth Councillors suggested to do that when we come back together to consider this further and to carry out the survey and to do that as widely as we're able to within the resources that there are and linking in with Councillors to help facilitate that
could I have a proposer, thank you, Councillor McConville and a seconder Councillor Chapman all in favour, thank you very much, that's great, please go home and warm up.